AGO never requested David's ban extension: Ministry

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Fri, 07/11/2008 8:04 PM  |  Headlines

The Attorney General Office (AGO) has never requested to extend the travel ban for convicted embezzler David Nusa Wijaya although the ban has been expired since Sept. 11, 2005, a ministry said.

"David managed to travel abroad as there was no legal basis to prevent him from doing so," said Syaiful Rachman, director of investigation at the Immigration Office of the Justice and Human
Rights Ministry.

The ministry issued another travel ban for David on Thursday only after a report that David was in Hong Kong.

The new ban was too late because David, on his arrival at the Hong Kong airport on Wednesday night, managed to show Hong Kong authorities and Indonesian representatives there an earlier letter from the Indonesian Justice and Human Rights Ministry that permitted him to leave Indonesia.

In 2003, the Supreme Court sentenced David to eight years in prison and fined him Rp 1.297 trillion (about US$139 million) to cover the losses he inflicted on the state through his misuse of the Bank Indonesia liquidity support fund.

In August 2004, David escaped before prosecutors could execute the court ruling and seize his assets. He was rearrested in January 2006 by a joint Indonesia-U.S. operation in San Francisco
when he was facing immigration charges there.

He has been detained in Jakarta since he was rearrested.

David re-appealed the verdict to the Supreme Court, which early this year reduced his sentence to four years in jail.

As David has served two-thirds of his four-year jail sentence since 2006, he was recently granted parole release. (dre/**)

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